Not strictly true. In the Uk, certainly ITV player and 4OD have advertisements before your show streams if you use the official methods of viewing them. (Not sure about 5 on Demand cos there's nothing on it I would ever watch) The plugins for XBMC bypass that and effectively deprive the channel of advertising views and therefore revenue.

Actually the ad revenue is based upon how many people view the content (programme) itself, not the advertisements. So watching in this method does not affect ad-revenue... currently. Hope this helps. The advertisers of course will prefer you to view their commercials and of course use lots of little ways for you to clikc-and-play to take you to their sites. The viewing figures of said advert, coupled with the viewing figures of the content AND how man click-and-play are waht determines the price of advertising slots on demand.

Another plus to the Free Cable and Hulu addons is they allow you to watch the programs commercial free by blocking the advertisements from being loaded in xbmc. I believe you can set Hulu to show the advertisements but I don't know why you would want to do that.

Not strictly true. In the Uk, certainly ITV player and 4OD have advertisements before your show streams if you use the official methods of viewing them. (Not sure about 5 on Demand cos there's nothing on it I would ever watch) The plugins for XBMC bypass that and effectively deprive the channel of advertising views and therefore revenue.

Think I'm getting misquoted lol - that wasn't me. That may be a copyright infringement

I had quite forgotten the UK structure (I did live there for a few years and paid the damn TV tax), and not sure how that affects streaming there, but I guess my point was more that: if it comes from either a paid service (e.g. Netflix) or is streamed from a network that owns the rights to distribute and pay for it as they see fit, it doesn't classify as piracy and should be freely discussable here.

Typically though that applies to streams, not storable content. Icefilms was an example of pirating, as are sites like the pirate bay for most content.

I'm glad to see many suggestions for legal streamed content popped up here.

StinDaWg Wrote:Another plus to the Free Cable and Hulu addons is they allow you to watch the programs commercial free by blocking the advertisements from being loaded in xbmc. I believe you can set Hulu to show the advertisements but I don't know why you would want to do that.

I understand that nobody wants to watch the ads... but it really is best to do so when possible. Hulu makes money from displaying the ads. If everyone running Hulu through XBMC is ignoring the ads, then Hulu is going to notice that and make more of a concerted effort to block Hulu from XBMC access, because nobody is seeing the ads. The more we make use of the ads, the less likely it will be that Hulu will try and block access to XBMC users. That's the idea at least.

crawl Wrote:If everyone running Hulu through XBMC is ignoring the ads, then Hulu is going to notice that and make more of a concerted effort to block Hulu from XBMC access, because nobody is seeing the ads.

How would Hulu know whether XBMC viewers are viewing their ads or not?

If you want something to replace IceFilms, it would probably be Navi-X unless IceFilms site gets new sources and cleans that up.

Almost every file hosting site is conducting illegal activities by hosting copyrighted content on their website. If there was something legal and better to use, we wouldn't be discussing IceFilms... if anything, the answer is Netflix and that seems to bother you greatly OP.

Actually the ad revenue is based upon how many people view the content (programme) itself, not the advertisements. So watching in this method does not affect ad-revenue... currently. Hope this helps. The advertisers of course will prefer you to view their commercials and of course use lots of little ways for you to clikc-and-play to take you to their sites. The viewing figures of said advert, coupled with the viewing figures of the content AND how man click-and-play are waht determines the price of advertising slots on demand.

Hope I helped explain a little further.

Actually... the ad revenue is based on how many people view the advertisement... plain and simple.

Advertisers have been complaining to Hulu for a while now that people are getting around ads, which means the money they give broadcasters to host and display these ads are nothing but free money to the broadcasters, with no way's of re-assuring it's ad customers that each viewer is getting delivered the ad as contracted with the content provider.

This is why ad counts increased this year, to make up for losses on missed advertisements AND typical corporate greed in revenue dollars.

Anyone who signed a contract contrary to ad views per viewer is getting shafted and is probably getting what they deserve for not making intelligent choices. Yes they exist and are a dying breed of suckers in the advertisement industry.

(2012-01-23 03:18)remops Wrote: OK Fine I will try to answer for others.

Old episodes of The Dick Van Dyke show , Rawhide, Andy Griffith show
Current episodes of Big Bang theory, Supernatural, Fringe, warehouse 13
Old and new movies and foreign films
CBS sports
Fox sports south

I know that I can get Netflix for most of the movies with a subscription and now xbmc has a plugin.

How about the TV shows is Hulu working? There is a subscription out there for CBS sports is there a plugin? How about Fox sports they have a Sports XTRA is there an plugin?

Thanks

I think the thing you are looking for is called a TV subscription. It is the only legal way of getting all of those.
This is exactly why people use torrents and rapidshare ect. Because there is no legal alternative or we would all be using that.
They don't want you to be able to see the latest movie on your tv before it is out of every movie theater in the world.
And even a bit longer because once you have forgotten most of the story they will first offer it to you on DVD.
And after that your cable company buys it with your subscription money and plays it for you again.
That is 3 times that you pay for it.
Just saying, if they don't provide a streaming service that has it all; XBMC can't offer a plugin.
And a streaming service doesn't seem to be in their best interest, or they would have done it already.
And i'm not talking about the producers, thee is a legion of middlemen out there that want to keep their revenue.

Dude, chill out. Everyone on the internet has an opinion, and there are stupid people on the internet, it's a fact of life. I'm not even sure who you're talking to lol

The fact is, legal vs. illegal is a lot more complicated than people here are making it out to be.

Here are some things to consider.

Nothing about Megaupload's business model is illegal (to narrow the focus of discussion, we'll stay within the US court system). It is not illegal to host a copy of a copyrighted work. It IS illegal to continue hosting that copy once you have been properly notified that the hosted media was created illegally.

It is NOT illegal to stream an illegal copy of a piece of content (keep reading). It IS illegal to make a copy of a copyrighted work IF THAT COPY IS NOT FOR PERSONAL USE, ie it is intended to be shared online. Now, most of us know that from a technical standpoint, downloading and streaming are the same thing, you're just not keeping the parts of the file around after you've watched them. There is a court precedent that indicates that DOWNLOADING (specifically) constitutes making a copy of something, making it illegal. In the United States you are (supposed to be) innocent until it can be proven that you have violated a specific law. Since there is not law or precedent that says streaming a file constitutes making a copy (which is the only thing that makes it illegal), streaming a file breaks no laws.

Further more, you have to consider incomplete, non-working copies. There is no law against making partial copies. In fact, these partial copies (or excerpts) are legally protected and specifically exempt from copyright law. Let's play out an extreme, but applicable example.

If I draw a circle on a piece of paper and write Avatar in it, have I made a copy of a cd? You're probably thinking "of course not!" (unless you work for the MAFIAA). But why, legally, does this not constitute making a copy? Because it's incomplete and unusable? What if I write out all the 1's and 0's on the disc, on the paper, by hand? If I then use optical character recognition software to turn my writing into digital 1's and 0's, so I can now play it back with media software, is that a copy of the original media, or a copy of my (legal) drawing? Does my pencil count as a tool for committing copyright infringement?

Writing all those 1's and 0's out by hand is a lot of work. I'm going to have my friend help me out and we'll each write half of the bits down on paper. Did one of us break make a copy? Which one? If my friend takes a picture of my half of the drawing, then reassembles the drawing and creates a copy of the movie, did I break the law? At what percentage of writing 1's and 0's does it become illegal?

Let's now extend this example to it's purely digital equivalent, bittorrent. I never possess the original content in digital form. Instead, I ask my anonymous friend for 6,000 bytes of a file who's hash is XXXXX. Then I ask another friend for 8,000 bytes of a file who's hash is also XXXXX. I continue this process until I have all of the pieces of the file who's hash is XXXX. For this to be illegal, it has to be proven that I have made a whole copy of a copyrighted work, that is intended for something other than personal use.

Now, bittorrent is a two-way protocol, so while I'm downloading, I'm also uploading, which means I'm potentially providing copies of my personal copy. The problem with that is the same as above. At what percentage of my drawing is a law broken? Does that percentage have to go to one person? What if I write each 1 or 0 on a separate scrap of paper and toss them off the empire state building (note: littering is bad kids). Did I break a copyright law? None of those scraps of paper are illegal, and neither is using bittorrent.

I hope that illustrates some of the sticky situation this is. These media groups make more money (almost twice as much last year) suing people than producing content. They don't want to fix this.

DDDamian Wrote:Obviously YouTube and the various TV plugins. What kind of legal media are you looking for? Out-of-copyright oldies? Basement bands? Granny's home videos? Tell us what legal media you're looking for.

If I want Youtube give me a break. Here we go again with the smart ass comments.

I'm asking again is there a alternate? The simple answer is no.

To get the icefilm media you need to have a subscription to Amazon, netflix and Hulu and then you wont get it all. Lets say you want the latest shows of Supernatural, where would you go. Comcast! BTW is Hulu plugin working?

I was just making a point that there is a need and maybe some one could put together a addon list that could help in finding your media.

Hulu - good for some TV but not all movie selection sucks and is there a plugin?
netfix - has a good source for movies but TV selection sucks.

and so on--

There's a lot of noobees that just loaded xbmc and would like to find some help.

I agree with you about smart a-- remarks when a noobee asks a question about xbmc. I thought that it was all supposed to be legal when I joined and now I am learning a lot of it aint. . One of the answers you got on this post said to use hulu, Netflix and other pay sites. I assume that if you watch Netflix and the others I just mention you still have to pay for a membership. I don't know.
I on disability so money is tight and I am tired of paying thru the nose to watch tv/movies. Thats why I joined here . I thought it was all free.
With some people on here a long time , they have learned the ins and outs about the legal/illegal add ons. I would like to know what add ons are legal and free and what ones are illegal.

So you honestly thought that content that is paid for by every other means can suddenly become totally free with an addon within XBMC without something shady being involved If there was such a legal avenue don't you think everyone would be using for products such as Smart TV's?

The simple guide is does that addon simply provide a XBMC interface to a web service, where you can sign up and watch stuff on the web service ala Netflix, hulu etc, so the addon simply connects to servers that host the streams for that legal web service.

Add-ons with illegal content will typically have no web interface equivalent (as it would be taken down by the rights holders) and so the media will be stored on a file sharing service, anything streaming from a file sharing service will usually be illegal.